Sometimes I get writer's block

I was attempting to write my paper. 7 pages, due Tuesday in class (at 12:30). So far, it's not going well at all.

Sometimes, I'm a good writer. Sometimes I actually read my paper and I'm like 'ok that sounds good.' Sometimes my brain bypasses correct punctuation usage in favor of getting the thought down. Today is not one of those times. Today everytime I reread a sentence I end up deleting it and starting over. And it deserves to be erased because it's awkward and rambly, with weird comma usage and/or other punctuation out of place. So I switch this word, delete this comma and rearrange the words a few more times. And 15 minutes later, I have a sentence. One. It's frustrating.

Sometimes the words just flow out of my brain through my fingertips and onto the screen. Sometimes my fingers can barely type fast enough to keep up with the direction of my thoughts. Sometimes everything goes smoothly. Today is not one of those times. Today my words are being pulled from my fingertips like a shard of glass from a wound, each painful word following the next until all I'm left with is the bloody mess that is my paper.

Sometimes my thesis is something I like. Today? No. Today my thesis can't be formed properly. I know the general, I can't narrow it down to the specific. I want my thesis to be something like "rationality in these texts = bad" but I need it to sound good, and I need it to make sense in relation to the rest of my paper. I need to know what the rest of my paper is going to be like.

My paper right now is an outline of characters and one way they show rationality = bad. I need more details. It's impossible to fill up seven pages with 'rationality = bad in X person because of this one reason. I need details!

The details won't happen without a better outline. Right now my outline is crap, and so my paper is crap and impossible to write. You can't write a paper like this without a decent outline, I know that. And yet, even just trying to write the detailed outline is almost impossible. I've been sitting here for 2 hours trying.

Sometimes papers make me want to kill myself.

fancy-schmancy

Today I gave myself a french manicure, painted my toenails in 'outback aphrodisiac' pink and bought white sandals ($2.49 at walmart).
I'm trying to bring on Summer, even though the weather is not cooperating.

food stuff

I can be very particular about what I eat. You wouldn't know it by looking at me, but I really am rather choosy about what I will or will not put in my mouth (don't be a pervert). When I was little, I had an aversion to green peppers and onions (which I suspect is are common yuck-foods for kids). Now, I don't mind them as long as they're not too overpowering. I also hated meatloaf, but I still hate that today so that hasn't changed much. Also I hated and still hate beets, sauerkraut, horseradish, pickles on hamburgers, and pretty much all chinese food (just the smell of any of those things makes me queasy).

Hates aside, I have been getting better. I've gotten over my hatred of sausage. I no longer refuse to eat chicken if it's not de-boned and/or de-skinned. Although I still think it's gross to eat it with bones/skin, I can (and do) eat it. I can even choke down fruit/veggies if theres only slight bruises on them, as opposed to the perfect quality test they used to undergo before I'd eat them.

That said, I haven't been eating as well as I should. On the plus side, I am eating a lot of fruit (as in..4+ oranges a day, along with another fruit like strawberries today), but since I'm not home I'm not eating a lot of veggies. My mom and dad are veggie obsessed, it's not supper unless there's a meat, veggie (or 2 or 3 if my dad has his way), and usually a starch (mashed potatos).

Here at school the vegetables are the weird kind (read: non-canned variety) and I can't bring myself to eat them because they just look so... odd. The green beans? Not the french cut style (yes, this is one area I am fussy, if I eat greenbeans they must be french style unless they're in ham & stringbean stew) that I'm used to, ohno, these are some weird long baked things with crunchy stuff sprinkled on. Cause you know, green with brown on top looks very appetizing (not!). Also, they serve squash on a regular basis. Squash! I've never eaten squash, and I never intend to. Another thing they serve that I won't eat? Mushrooms. We have mushrooms on a regular basis here at school- they serve it about 3 nights on something (chicken usually) every 3 weeks (the food schedule is made up of 3 weeks, repeated through the semester). Eew. Just the texture is enough to make me want to gag. Sometimes, on a supreme pizza, I spend a good amount of time picking it all off only to miss a piece and accidently put it in my mouth... I can't express how much I hate mushroom pizza.

Anyway, needless to point out again but I will, I'm not eating all that healthily here at school. Today I had a sandwich for lunch and another one for dinner. I think I'm just sick of cafeteria food... I'm starting to prefer eating a PB&J to going to the cafeteria.

Good thing I only have 18 more days of being on campus, then it's home for the summer! I'm really looking forward to some good fruits & veggies this summer. I'm practically drooling just thinking about it.

update

I've now done all of my work for the first 2 days of next week (Mon/Tues).
I'm still sick.
Coincidence?

See what being super-productive does?

It gets you sick! Well, it does in my case at least. And I don't want to hear about how everyone else in my immediate family and some in the dorm are sick, no, I'm blaming this cold on my surge of productivity.
I have done all of my work for this week (it's only Monday, and I've done everything for Tues/Weds/Thurs) except one little 1 page paper (precis) I have to write by Weds afternoon.
I've just realized that, including weekends and non-school days, I only have 16 days left til finals. Seeing as how the first 2 days of finals I have a 6 and a 4 page paper due, that kind of worried me a bit.
But too bad, right now I'm just going to concentrate on being sick. If only I hadn't used up my sick absent days for classes already...

my 'aha' moment

Thinking about it tonight, I've realized why I've been so quick to yell at my roommate lately. The thing is, not only do I not really like her much, but I've no respect for her. Yes, I respect her as a person, but just because I see her in human form, not because I think she's any type of person worth being around. And so since I don't respect her (and I don't even believe she's earned or deserves my, or anybody elses, respect) I'm less likely to treat her as I would everyone else.

Usually when I get mad you know it because I won't talk to you as much or in the same tones as before. And then once I'm past that stage I'll try to talk to you about it reasonably in normal tones and say why I'm upset and what my fault in it is and what your fault is and etc. And usually we can come both come out of it feeling better.

But with this roommate... any attempt to talk to her turns into her getting mega-defensive and yelling. And so now that I know this, I guess I cut to the quick and just start off in a yelling/awful tone. And without fail, that's the direction the should-have-been discussion goes. There's no middle ground for her, it's always a case of "I'm right, and you just dont understand why because of (whatever)." It's impossible for her to admit that she's wrong, or that she even has any part of the blame in any situation. Sometimes we (we being either myself or my other roommate, plus the roommate I'm talking about) are just in a normal conversation and one of us says something and she has to say how "this place is better" or "it's not like Boston!" Well duh, it's not Boston. If it were Boston, it wouldnt' be what I'm talking about seeing as how I've never been there. I've nothing against it, apparently it's an amazing place, but that doesn't have anything to do with what we were just talking about. And yet that's what the talk turns into- Boston (or the state she's from or X amount of other things she changes subject into).

Also, she's one of those people that only cares about her own problems. If she had a bad experience in her morning class, she's still talking about it over dinner. If you try to talk about something else, she gets this glazed look in her eye and if you get any answer at all its an 'uh-huh' and then in your mid-sentence she'll exclaim about her bad morning... again. For the 1,000th time.

Those are only a few of the reasons, but they're big issues as to why I cannot respect her. Now that I've realized how I really feel about her, I'm going to try to keep that in mind and not be so quick to anger or angry tones. Because it doesn't help the situation anyway, and I don't like myself as a person when I am like that.

So for my own, purely selfish, reasons I am going to try to shake the annoyed and angry tones next week. We'll see how it goes.

I had a lot of fun

at the bar. We left campus relatively early (10:30) and only stayed 3 hours, but it was plenty time enough to have a lot of fun and for 2 of the girls in my group to get drunk. That in itself was worth going for, they're the type of girls that are extremely happy and very amusing to watch when they're drunk. Everything's an adventure with them, especially when they're giddy from alcohol.

I didn't get drunk, I only had 1 GIANT Long Island Iced Tea and 1 (and a 1/2) Rum & Coke with lime. I don't know if it was the alcohol or the music, it was probably a combination of both, but I had a lot of fun and even loosened up enough to dance and sing. What's the harm in singing when its so loud that nobody can hear you? What's the harm in dancing when everyone at the bar is too drunk to remember you... or too drunk to be able to lift their own feet let alone do anything that looks like dancing.

The place was super-crowded, I spent half the night being bumped into. For a girl that doesn't like to be touched, I sure had a lot of people touching me that night (not that kind of touching, get your mind out of the gutter)! Usually I'd be uptight and freaked out by all the bumping-into that was going on, but I just adapted and went with the flow. Afterall, it's not like the people were bumping into anyone on purpose, there was just so many people there that they had to bump into someone to move in any direction.

And speaking of crowded... what is it with only having 2 ladies toilets on the main floor? There was easily 250 girls and TWO toilets. It was insane. I mean, there was only 1 toilet for the guys, but come on, guys don't use the bathroom near as much as women. And once I started drinking... sheesh! I used the bathroom twice in 3 hours and it took longer waiting in line than it did in the stall.

Bathrooms and bumping aside, it was a great night. I had a lot of fun and I'm glad I didn't call up my friend and chicken out at the last minute like I so desperately wanted to earlier in the day. I'm going again, I'm just not sure when. But I will bring a camera next time and take lots more pictures.

oh my...

Click here if you want to see me flashing someone.

easter baby!

All me:
yumm...eggs! (6months old)

Look mommie, I got one! (18 months)

Look at me all fancy (in my non-matching blue coat). (2years)

(2years old again)

The bunny made me cry! (2 or 3 years old?) My brother could care less about him...

Maybe one of the last times I voluntarily wore a dress: (4 or 5 years old?)


Happy Easter everyone!

the horse is dead, leave it alone!

Right now I'm limiting myself to just one thing that still irritates me, even though I have been extremely cranky (in my head at least, if not outward) and I can name 10 things that are irritating me at any given moment. I'm choosing not to write about them because I doubt it'll help and well, frankly, I don't feel like it. I'm just hoping that typing this one out will purge me of it, cause it's really becoming annoying having this laying in the back of my mind all the time.
Rant:
My suite-mate is a weird girl. She's a germaphobe, but not really. She only finds certain 'germy' things disgusting, so it's more like she has weird preferences instead of being an actual germaphobe. Anyway, about 3 months into the school year, she decided that the Dawn dish soap I had bought wasn't good enough, and that it needed to be replaced because it was "so old" and it was "disgusting that we still have it." It was 3 months old, there was still 3/4 of a bottle left, it was perfectly good dish soap!
Ok, fine. She wants to buy new dish soap. I don't argue about that, I try to pick my battles well and save the angst for the important stuff. Now, seeing as how it's the dish soap that I bought, wouldn't it make sense that it's my soap? Now, I don't know about you, but when I know something is someone elses, I don't throw it away just because I bought a new one. You're not supposed to throw stuff away that isn't your own! That's like rule number 2 in the 'how to be a good roommate' handbook (it follows #1: learn to use your indoor voice).
She didn't ask me to throw it away. She even waited til I was away to do it so I couldn't object. The whole incident really grated my cheese, so to speak.
And so now, in typical 'heather is pissed off' style, I'm using her soap as if it were mine. That means that I use a ton of it. What's that? The dishwater has more water than soap? Add some more! Need to get a stubborn stuck on piece of food off the plate? Pour the dish soap directly on the spot AND in the water. Feel like making a bubble sculpture? Go right ahead (granted, I haven't done this yet. But I want to!).
Afterall, to my calculations, she owes me a bottle of dish soap. And an apology.

No, I don't really care about the dish soap. It's the principle of the thing. It's what the dish soap stands for. You should not throw away stuff that isn't yours. Especially without permission and/or the owners knowledge.